Synopsis

Three-helping set of films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, considered one of the most important filmmakers ever. Italian by birth, he made a name for himself as perhaps the primary revolutionary voice in postwar Italian cinema, employing similar methods to Truffaut and Godard. Choosing subjects among the working class and those at the far southern reaches of the social scale, Pasolini catalogued society's more revolutionary quarters such as Marxists and the homosexual community 'Accatone' (1964) is Pasolini's film about street life and prostitution which employs a near-documentary style and non-professional actors. Accattone (Franco Citti) is a pimp who falls in love and tries to go straight, only to give up and return to the streets to find his girls working for someone else. 'Love Meetings' (1965) is a revolutionary documentary in which Pasolini takes to the streets with camera and mic, asking Italians the most intimate questions about sex; does virginity matter? Are women men's equals? What do they think of homosexuals? This in a stanchly Catholic country, indeed the cradle of Catholicism, raises a whole set of issues by itself about forthrightness but the answers paint a picture of a series of changing attitudes between areas and social classes. Ro.Go.Pa.G (1962) contains four films by four directors: in Roberto Rossellini's 'Illibatezza' (Chastity), an Italian air hostess in Bangkok is pursued by an American businessman; in Pier Pasolini's 'La Ricotta', notions of religion and belief are explored as a biblical blockbuster is being filmed outside Rome; Jean-Luc Godard's 'Il Nuovo Mondo' (The New World) is a look at a post-nuclear explosion future; and Ugo Gregoretti's 'Il Pollo Ruspante' (The Free-Range Chicken) is a satire on modern living. Pasolini's contribution earned him a suspended prison sentence for blasphemy.